Working Women Before 1939 Analysis

How far was working-class political organisation and activity the preserve of men before 1939?

This paper aims to consider the role of women and work, their involvement in both community and political protest and to determine if working-class political organisation and activity was the preserve of men before nineteen thirty-nine. To do this we must firstly understand what women’s position within the labour market was by taking account of the cultural norms of the time. The Victorian concept of separate public and private spheres saw the gendered divisions of males and females in society. The public sphere was perceived as the masculine domain of paid work, while the private sphere was regarded as that of the female realm of home and family.

The reality was a vast majority of women were neither mothers nor married, moreover the notion of a woman creating a working identity did not fit societal norms. Thus the divisions of labour along sexual lines were not simply about assigning work according to capability it was about power, status, position and gender. Hartmann argues that such control over women “is maintained directly in the family by man, but it is sustained by social institutions such as the state and religion.” Society had a stereotypical view of women workers, for example at a public meeting in Glasgow, held to extend trade unionism amongst women, the contributions of Lady Mary Murray, Professor G A Smith and Robert Smillie of the Miners Federation, stressed their opinions that “... the defective organisation of women workers is largely due to their own apathy.” Gordon asserts that the family wage policy of the trade union movement together with its promiseto the domestic ideal was a huge influence on union attitudes to women who entered the labour market. Women workers were seen as out of place, and were viewed as a

Male workers believed that women were a threat to their jobs and the fact that they were paid lower wages aggravated the threat. Additionally the narrative to explain this opposition to exclude women was not blamed on capitalism; rather, it could be argued, it was due to the “patriarchal relations between men and women where men wanted to assure that women would continue to perform the appropriate tasks at home”. Hartmann argues that women’s jobs were lower paid, deemed to be less skilled and in positions that held no control or authority. Furthermore she contends that men utilized their trade-union membership to strengthen the division of labour through job segregation and thus reinforced women’s subordinate role in the home and in their position within the labour market. This is highlighted on examination of trade union attitudes “to protective legislation designed to regulate the hours and conditions of work of women and children in industries where their labour did not necessarily threaten male employment”. This union opposition is borne out in the following quote from the Women’s Trade Union Review in July 1897 on the question of women at work, “…the short sentence, 'organise the women workers', simply bristles with difficulties. Many of them have been pointed out again and again. The lack of